Every Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Jean Lafitte National Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center in Thibodaux, Jerry Moody keeps Cajun culture alive “like it was.”Comme CÚtait, which means “like it was,” is the name of the band he leads during the Cajun Jam session.“I can play the accordion, but I’m not an accordion player,” quipped Moody, who helps take back the older members of the audience to their younger days and teaches the younger generation about their heritage. Moody said he has always been drawn to the reedy, organ-like sound of the accordion, which is highly associated with Cajun music.There are four different styles of French music in Louisiana, according to Moody — Traditional Cajun, Creole, Zydeco and Texas Swing music. Cajun music with the accordion was re-energized after World War II when Louisiana veterans returning from overseas began to flood the dance halls requesting to hear music featuring the instrument. The accordion however, wasn’t as popular in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, places dominated by acoustic guitar and the fiddle, Moody said. “We play traditional music only. I won’t play any of the others. On occasion we’ll do songs popularized by local musicians, but I won’t play the accordion then. I’ll just let the fiddle and guitar player have it,” he said. He’s been leading the jam for two and a half years but started out with a Saturday morning jam twice a month. “When we first started if we had six people in the audience we had a crowd. Now we have 50 to 100 people every week from locals to tourists,” he said. Moody loves to tell the story of how he started playing at the Acadian Cultural Center. When he and his wife Judith moved to Thibodaux, the jam session was already an event the center promoted. They would come listen to the music, but Moody wanted to be a part of it when he began to master the accordion. “This group resented the accordion,” he said. A couple of the guys in the band played accordion, but their simple melodies were almost an insult to the Cajun historian. “Whenever I would play my style, it was intimidating, or they just didn’t like it because it was not apart of their music here,” Moody said. The band would only let him play one song, which frustrated Moody. He talked to the director about it “many times” and that led to the start of the Saturday morning sessions. Several months after the group left and another experiment didn’t work out, the director asked Moody and his band to play on Mondays. Moody said he loves playing for an audience that enjoys the Cajun culture. “We want people to be proud of who they are. I’m proud of who I am. I’ve never been ashamed of who I am,” he said. “It’s always for the people.” Moody grew up in Vatican, a small unincorporated town 15 miles northwest of Lafayette, where he learned to love the local music.“That music has always been my life. Even as a teenager when my friends would listen to rock ‘n’ roll and go to the Bamboo Club in Lake Charles, I would head to the Shamrock Club, which played traditional honky tonk Cajun music,” Moody said. “Rock ‘n’ roll and swamp pop, they’ve never appealed to me.” Moody said he used to visit old Cajun dance halls and noticed a distinct age gap between him and the others there. “I looked around and said, ‘Mom, do you realize I’m the only person in here not drawing Social Security?’ ” he said while laughing. But the women loved to dance and so did he. So he had a great time anyway.He bought his first accordion in 1983 but moved to Idaho where he didn’t have an opportunity to learn how to play the instrument. Eventually he would divorce his wife, but stay up north until his kids were grown.He married his current wife and they both started playing instruments when they reached their 50s. “She’s had a guitar for a long time but never got into playing it until I started with the accordion,” he said. Moody moved back to Louisiana with his wife so he could attend culinary school at Nicholls State University. But after a short stint at a country club didn’t work out, Moody started a small business and was left with a lot of free time. Eighteen years after he originally purchased an accordion he decided it was time to learn how to play it. His original attempts to learn were met with hostility. “They’d all say the same thing, ‘You can’t teach (the accordion), you’ve got to have that in your head,’” he said. At age 57 he began to take lessons from Jimmy Breaux, an accordion player for the Grammy Award-winning band Beausoleil. He also participated in a one-month training session in Lafayette with Steve Riley and the Mambou Playboys. “I would drive to Lafayette for a one-hour lesson, then drive back. Six hours on the road for a lesson,” said Moody, now 63. “I’ve had some really neat experiences once I started playing.”Moody said he intends to keep on playing in the band for a while but will continue to play the accordion even after the band disbands.

Staff Writer Jacob Batte can be reached at 448-7635 or jacob.batte@dailycomet.com.